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Monday, March 28, 2016

A Year of Video Essays from Lost in the Movies

A complete line-up of all my video work from the past twelve months

A few days from now marks the first anniversary of my involvement with Fandor Keyframe as a freelance video essayist, and with it the opening of a sustained period of video-making for me. I began work on "Manufacturing Dreams," my first Fandor submission, on April 2, 2015, and last week I completed work on my most recent submission, which will make its official debut in three days. At first my pace was about one video a month, maybe even a little less (although I did revamp and upload my entire "32 Days of Movies" clip series to Vimeo around this time). But by late summer I had picked up the pace, supplementing my Fandor videos with (roughly) biweekly entries on my YouTube and Vimeo channels. I was also invited to participate in the Out 1 video project, offering my first opportunity for video essay collaboration. Meanwhile the audience for my "Journey Through Twin Peaks" videos was growing throughout this same period, making it truly the year of the video essay.
Aside from the anniversary, now is a good time to pause and reflect for several reasons. Due to a broken computer monitor (replacement arriving shortly) I haven't had a chance to get far ahead, so what you see in this lineup is not only what has been uploaded during this time, but what has been created, a situation I (hopefully) will not be in again as I build a backlog. The past two months have also been my busiest, catching up with a lot of postponed videos in February and jumping ahead to unveil more videos in March than I had in any previous month. I am also honored that in the coming weeks Kevin B. Lee will be screening "Learning to Look," one of my video essays, with an audience in Vienna as part of a presentation of his own work along with that of several other essayists. Finally, I am about to begin work on my most ambitious video project since "Journey Through Twin Peaks" so it's the perfect time to take stock of what's come in between. Here is the full list organized by category of approach, with title, subject, and all available direct links to the videos (for any accompanying written pieces see my tag "Video Essays"):